‘I have some tenders I’m looking at…ideas I need to commit to paper. A couple of meetings lined up as well…’
‘In which case…’ he had gestured magnanimously at the boardroom table ‘…you can sit anywhere you like at this table and do whatever you have to do right here. That way, you’re at hand when I need to ask you a question. As for meetings? You have my word that after five your time is yours.’
He wasn’t about to give way on this because he was the sort of man who never gave way on anything.
Mia had thus discovered the joys of the very type of office job she had often teasingly reminded her sisters was the very depths of boring.
The puzzle for her was that she enjoyed it more than she had thought she would, more than she thought she should.
She perched opposite him. She’d brought all her work with her and she had to admit that the surroundings were pretty fabulous. Pastries and coffee were on tap. It was beautifully air-conditioned and, in fairness, he had a capacity to focus that was incredible. When he became involved in conference calls, when he sat frowning in front of his computer, scrolling and making notes, when he spoke to CEOs, voice clipped and every word succinct and to the point, she knew that she ceased to exist.
And when she was in that place where she ceased to exist…her eyes strayed. She couldn’t help it. She sneaked glances at him, committing to memory the way he sat with his chair swivelled at an angle…the way he stared off into the distance when he was concentrating…the way he absently tapped his pen on the table when he was working on his computer, a gesture that summed up the restless energy of his personality.
Today, they were going to be meeting with Nat at the hotel, but Mia was already running late.
As luck would have it, and for the first time in weeks, dazzling blue skies had been replaced with driving rain.
It was a little after four and Mia had cycled from one of her clients, a guy with a roof garden and ambitious plans to turn it into a vegetable paradise with wild flowers in tubs. She had had to gently dissuade him from plans to add a couple of bee hives to the mix because he liked honey.
The sun had been shining when she’d left her house but in the space of a couple of hours the skies had gone from cerulean blue to leaden grey and then the heavens had opened.
Instead of the twenty-minute ride to the hotel, she had taken over forty-five minutes, and it was after five by the time she pulled away from the main drag and along the quiet side roads that led to the construction site.
The hotel was located in a brilliant spot, a taxi ride from the city but edging towards the sea, against a backdrop of stunning land dense with trees and threaded with waterfalls.
It was the perfect getaway, a child-free hotel where there would be no limits to the luxury on offer.
The site had been very carefully chosen and it was a brilliant example of the magical juxtaposition on the island of wild nature, urban seaside and captivating metropolis.
The sun was fading by the time she skidded to a stop and wiped the rain from her eyes to look at what had been accomplished over the past few months.
Less than Max had expected. She knew that from a couple of the things he had said after his abbreviated visit there with Nat. In fairness, she couldn’t blame him. The schedule had been pushed back several times because first of all Izzy had decided not to go with any of the suggestions her brother had made and then, having charted a different route, she had dithered when it had come to making her mind up on several crucial points.
Tarpaulin protected some of the half-built rooms, and for the rest foundations had been laid and were patiently awaiting stage two. The weeds coiling round the cement and bricks seemed to indicate that several of those foundations had given up all hope of being completed and were happy to wave a white flag and kick back for the duration.
Mia leapt off the bike while shoving it upright all in one smooth motion and sprinted towards the one bit of the hotel that was the least forlorn.
The extensive kitchen was pretty much done, which was to say that there were walls, a roof, concrete ground and various partitions, gaps and openings where appliances would eventually fit. The space was enormous. She arrived in a soaking rush to find Max already there and waiting for her.
The construction workers had kitted out the place as best they could so that they could do some very rudimentary cooking. There was a kettle, some mugs, an electric hot plate and a motley assortment of mismatched chairs.
A working mini-fridge was plugged into a socket and there was an electric fan.
‘You’re late.’
Still trying to dry herself the best she could in the absence of a towel, Mia screeched to a halt and glared at him.
He was as dry as a bone and had helped himself to a mug of coffee, which he was loosely holding, half-resting it on his lap. He dwarfed the chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. He looked dry and comfortable and utterly elegant in an understated way. Faded jeans, tan loafers and a white short-sleeved tee shirt.
‘Thank you for pointing that out,’ Mia snapped. She gave a final squeeze of her hair and saw that he was holding out a handkerchief for her. Pride made her want to ignore it completely, but pride would have to take second place to practicality, and right now she just wanted some part of her to be dry.
She wiped her face and handed him back the handkerchief. It was late, so a completely wasted trip, because there was no way she would be able to show him anything now.
She’d cycled like a maniac to get here and his opening words were you’re late?
Mia thought he was lucky she didn’t hurl something at him, and she wouldn’t have cared whether she was a handsomely paid employee or not.
‘I cycled here,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘It was fine when I left but, since I’m not a meteorologist, I didn’t predict this thunderstorm, so it took a lot longer than I’d banked on.’
Max stood up and continued to look at her while she cast him a glowering, baleful, sullen look.
‘You’re soaked.’
‘Thanks for pointing out the obvious.’
‘You should have pulled over and phoned me to cancel. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world.’
Mia didn’t say anything because that hadn’t even occurred to her. She’d been running on adrenaline, not paying as much attention as she should to her client, keen to head off, because the thought of seeing Max had been a hot, driving excitement in her veins.
So hot and so driving that common sense had taken a back seat. Of course she should have called him! As soon as the clouds had started turning an angry black, she should have pulled over, got out her mobile phone and explained the situation. An idiot would have been able to figure out that driving rain would make a nonsense of her timings.
‘Come on.’ He urged her towards the door, hand cupping her elbow. ‘There’s a half-dirty tea towel hanging around here somewhere, but no convenient pile of towels, I’m afraid. I’ll get you home.’
‘Get me home?’
‘Nothing to do here. Way too rainy, way too late and way too dark. My driver is waiting.’
She was being shuffled out of the place, barely concentrating on what she was doing or where they were going.
‘My bike…’
‘Will live to ride another day. Now, run!’
She obeyed instinctively. She was already so wet. The thought of getting any wetter didn’t bear thinking about. She was cold too, her teeth chattering and her clothes clinging to her like cling film.
She literally bolted for the dry sanctuary of the car, and she would have made it as well if the wretched, soggy, uneven ground of a building site hadn’t conspired to bring her crashing to her knees.
She was racing one minute, and the next she was lying in a heap on the ground, and when she hurriedly began to prop herself back up her foot buckled
under her and she gave a yelp of pain.
The rain washed over her, sharply pricking her skin, and overhead there was a crack of thunder that made her start.
All of this took place in a matter of seconds—the running, the falling, the roar of thunder and then the horrifying realisation that he was sweeping her off her feet and sprinting to the car. His driver had opened an umbrella, the passenger door was open, then they were both inside the car and the door was slammed shut behind them.
‘Your foot,’ Max said as the car purred away from the site and back out towards the city. ‘How much does it hurt?’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Mia muttered.
‘There’s nothing to be gained by being a martyr. Do I need to take you to hospital? Only you can tell me exactly how bad it is, so don’t lie.’
‘It’s fine.’ She tentatively tried to circle her ankle and winced.
‘Right. We’ll go back to your house and I’ll have a look but, if I’m in any doubt, I’m getting a doctor out.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘I’m not being ridiculous, Mia,’ he said coolly. ‘All precautions will be taken, because the last thing I need is a lawsuit for negligence. So if I think a doctor needs to come out, then out he comes, whether you agree or not.’
‘You think I’d what?’ Mia gaped, momentarily distracted from the pain in her ankle and the way her clothes were becoming glued to her body. ‘Sue you because I was an idiot who fell over?’
Max shrugged. ‘As it happens, I don’t, but who knows?’
‘God, what sort of world do you live in?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, it seems that in your world women are either open to a bit of blackmail or else trying to sue you for something that’s not your fault! In other words, you’re not exactly prepared to give women the benefit of the doubt, are you?’
She looked at him narrowly and was perversely satisfied at the dark flush of colour that delineated his razor-sharp cheekbones. For once, she’d caught him on the back foot, and it felt great.
He looked away, and she wanted to prod at the sore spot she had found, because he got to her and it felt good that she could likewise get to him.
‘When you get to the top of the ladder,’ he said, turning to her, his voice matter-of-fact, borderline indifferent, ‘it pays to put trust at the back of the queue.’
‘You don’t trust anyone?’ Mia asked with disbelief. She might have gone through the misery of a divorce, and she may have built her own ivory tower to protect herself from getting hurt again, but that didn’t mean she didn’t trust people.
Her family…her friends… Her default position wasn’t that she had to be on red-hot alert one hundred percent of the time because everyone was capable of hiding a knife behind their back.
She felt a wave of compassion. He might be as hard as granite, but you didn’t get to a position of such cynicism without your past experiences putting you there.
‘I feel sorry for you, Max,’ she said quietly, and his eyebrows shot up.
‘Should I be touched or irritated?’
‘I expect you’ll be irritated,’ she confirmed. ‘You said that I’m on the lookout for an argument all the time. Well, I’m no different to you, am I? I’m just being honest. It must be a lonely life if you can’t trust anyone at all. You might have all the money in the world but if you’re alone in your glass tower then what’s the point?’
‘I cope.’
Two words signalling the end of the conversation. He didn’t look irritated. He looked bored.
A door had been slammed in her face, and she couldn’t blame him, because commenting on his private life was way out of order.
He was her boss and her role was to liaise with him about the hotel, end of story. Her role was not to make wise proclamations about his life choices. She wasn’t a landscape gardener turned shrink!
Her cheeks stung and she looked away, and with relief realised that they were nearing her house. She’d barely noticed the journey. She’d barely noticed her soaked clothes or her foot!
The driver was out of the car as soon as he’d killed the engine, umbrella at the ready. Max moved with similar alacrity, removing all chance of her taking a stand and trying to hobble to the door unaided.
In fact, her feet weren’t allowed to touch the ground at all. Swept off her feet twice in a day, Mia thought with a touch of mild hysteria, and not in the way she’d ever imagined it happening.
‘It’s in the front pocket,’ she muttered, before he could ask her where the house key was, and he duly located it and pushed open the door.
‘I’ll call you when I’m ready,’ he said to the driver, who nodded and returned to the car.
The rain followed them through the open door, but then Max slammed it shut, and it became a steady, noisy beating against the roof and walls.
This was not how he had imagined the day panning out. Of course, it was essential that he had a walk through with her. Not only was she knowledgeable when it came to the accounts system but her main job involved the outside space, the land, and he needed to have an idea of how she intended to utilise the space. When he had discussed the hotel with his sister well over a year ago when it had been in the embryonic stage, he had suggested an infinity pool and all the various outdoor luxuries that came with that, including a state-of-the-art bar nestled among the trees where cocktails and drinks could be served on a more or less non-stop basis.
All those ideas had gone down the drain, so it was necessary to know exactly what was destined to replace it, because the financial projections were all over the place.
Yes, this was a necessary trip, but even so he had been studiously putting it off.
Just having her sit at the other end of that boardroom table had been a challenge.
He’d been aware of her in ways that made a joke of his legendary self-control. He’d had to conduct most of his conversations on the phone, with his chair angled in such a way that she was just on the periphery of his vision, because every time he’d looked at her—her, head downbent, chin propped in the palm of her hand, her brown hair falling to one side—he’d had to fight against getting a hard-on.
It was crazy, and he didn’t like himself for it, but he hadn’t been able to do a thing about it. If he could have shouted questions across the table, he would have, but she’d had to edge next to him to stare at the same facts and figures on the same computer and her proximity had been great at messing with his head.
He wanted her. That was what it came down to. She was off-limits, but he wanted her, and the more he tried to ignore the tug at his senses the harder the tug was.
So he had deferred the inevitable trip to the hotel, and he certainly hadn’t envisaged a sudden torrential downpour bringing him to this place, in her house, with her in his arms.
She was as light as a feather. He could have lifted her with one hand. And was she aware that the way those wet clothes clung…?
He’d fought to stop himself from staring. He knew that he’d reacted somewhat more aggressively than the occasion demanded when she had fallen and done whatever she’d done to her foot.
Had he really said something about getting a doctor because he had to protect himself against a possible lawsuit?
He had opened the door wide to her comments about the way he lived his life. Not her business, and he could definitely care less, but she had got under his skin and he wasn’t sure whether that was because he was just so hyper-aware of her or because she insisted on ignoring all the Do Not Trespass signs everyone else managed to read very clearly.
She got to him in every way, and now here he was. In her house.
He looked around him and headed in the direction of the bedroom, while she remained passive in his arms, clearly having given up on fighting him. He could feel her warmth radiating beyond the wet c
lothes, the softness of her legs and the slightness of her body.
She was so natural—so lacking in any artifice. There was no make-up for the rain to wash away.
Never had he been more aware of his body or more alert to the temptation to hold her close, keep holding her, kiss her, touch her…
‘You need to change,’ he said abruptly.
He looked around him at her small house, with lots of wood and a feeling of homeliness. He’d glanced at the kitchen as he’d walked past and had seen colourful cupboards and an old pine table. The furniture in the living room was squashy and mismatched and the overhead fan was desultory. Here, in the bedroom, the double bed was covered with some kind of old-fashioned patchwork quilt, and there was a rocking chair by the window that overlooked a very pretty, panoramic view of shrubs and flowers and, in the distance, sand leading down to the sea.
The rain continued to pelt against the windows. If it hadn’t been raining, and if night hadn’t begun creeping in, casting long, dark shadows, Max was pretty sure he would have been able to hear the roll of the sea through the windows and see a blaze of stars in the sky.
Never one to get swept up in appreciating the scenery, he was momentarily disconcerted. He looked round to see her rising to her feet and he shook his head.
‘Tell me where to look and I’ll get what you want.’
Judging from her stubborn expression, he was guessing that the last thing she wanted was to direct him to her drawers so that he could fish out dry clothes for her, but she did as she was asked.
‘Need help putting these clothes on?’ He looked at her. ‘It’s going to be tricky getting out of those wet things.’
‘I can manage.’
‘Well, if you find you can’t, then I’m within shouting distance. In fact, I’ll wait right outside the door. Call me when you’re dressed. I’m going to inspect your ankle, and don’t even attempt to hobble out to me.’
Mia muttered something under her breath and looked at him with sulky hostility. ‘You mean just in case I topple over and sue you for personal injury?’
Max shot her an impatient look and raked his fingers through his hair.
Forbidden Hawaiian Nights Page 6
